


It's Not Nirvana (But It's On The Way)

by volunteerfd



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Crossover, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23014336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volunteerfd/pseuds/volunteerfd
Summary: Tony, Bruce, Pepper, and Nat are in The Good Place, but it isn't good at all. Bruce is gay but his soulmate is a woman, Tony wants a computer but all he can get is a whiteboard, the angel Michael seems like either an idiot or an asshole (or both?), and there are avocaderias everywhere. Tony can't abide anything less than perfection, but how can he fix things when the Powers That Be keep squashing him, Pepper keeps being reasonable, and Bruce hates his guts? Can he unite a ragtag group of dead people to make The Good Place less bad?
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Tony Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	It's Not Nirvana (But It's On The Way)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to heyjupiter 4 being the best, and for putting up with Bruce hating Tony for longer than she's comfortable with.
> 
> Yes, the title is a reference to A Summer in Ohio from The Last Five Years.

Bruce always assumed that his perpetual state of discomfort would go away when he died. As a man of science (who still maintained a latent anti-theistic streak from his edgy teenage years), he thought death meant the end: the end of consciousness; the end of life; the end of shrinking in a corner of a roomful of people, tugging his sleeves and wondering when he could leave. 

He was wrong on two accounts. One: there was, in fact, an afterlife. Two, he was still uncomfortable and tugging his sleeves, wondering when he could leave, except now the answer was never. He was stuck here  _ forever.  _ He was a very intelligent man--a certified genius, in fact--but even he couldn’t wrap his mind around eternity, infinity, forever, an endless expanse sweeping ahead of him, behind him, all directions. And now he was stuck in it.

A third surprise: he was in The Good Place. At least, that’s what he was told. He wasn’t a particularly good person, though he had tried to go through the ministrations: working for non-profits, selling his million-dollar brain-labor for a tenth of its value, beating his anger down with a stick. Still, he felt that his goodness was skin deep and the worst parts of him were just under the surface, separated only by a thin membrane, barely two distinct parts. His memories of his death were foggy, but it had the same sickly cast of green-and-red anger his worst moments had. He wouldn’t be surprised if he’d done something so terrible that it negated every minor act of goodness he’d tried to put into the world. 

A fourth surprise was that The Good Place wasn’t very good at all. It wasn’t torturous, so he felt guilty for complaining when the alternative would be fire and brimstone and thumbscrews. But it wasn’t pleasant. Or it was pleasant in the specifically unpleasant way of visiting distant relatives, crouched in their hideous heart-patterned-wallpapered living room filled with porcelain frog knicknacks and casserole dishes. No one was in physical pain and everyone was smiling, yet he still found himself thinking longingly of a prostate exam, a tooth extraction, anywhere else.

And could it really be The Good Place if Tony Stark was there--fear-mongering war criminal terrorist billionaire Tony Stark, the face of modern evil? Was there a more potent vision of Hell than watching Tony Stark schmooze around and try to charm Bruce, the one hold-out of the Tony Stark Fanclub? Bruce liked to think his disapproval tormented Tony as much as everyone’s adoration of Tony tormented Bruce. 

But probably not. Tony’s afterlife was just as charmed as his life-life. For his soulmate, he was matched with a gorgeous strawberry blonde, whip-smart and hypercompetent and way too good for him. It surprised Bruce that Tony’s soulmate wasn’t some submissive--Bruce didn’t want to use the word  _ bimbo _ but...It surprised him just as much that Pepper was satisfied with a man like Tony. But they had chemistry that sparked and zapped whenever they were near. Bruce felt something akin to jealousy watching them, although he wasn’t sure what for. He certainly didn’t want a partner like Tony, as handsome as the face of evil was. In fact, Bruce would vastly prefer Pepper to Tony, which meant a lot coming from a gay man.

He had long come to terms with his sexuality. He wasn’t bisexual or fluid or questioning or whatever. He was firmly gay.

So imagine his surprise when, in the afterlife, he was told that his soulmate was a woman. Granted, she was an objectively stunning woman. Her voluminous breasts bounced and such like. But her divine proportions did nothing for Bruce, who regarded her body with nothing but clinical admiration.

He’d brought this up to Michael, the angel who made the decisions and who took the form of an older white male authority figure, of course. Michael insisted that Bruce and Natasha belonged together.

“We don’t really have much in common,” Bruce said, “or chemistry.” Natasha was a good  _ pal  _ and excellent company. She took Bruce’s lack of interest in stride and didn’t seem to be put off by an eternity without sex. Or maybe she was getting some on the side. Bruce didn’t care. He was happy she found some outlet. Still, though, it was just as unfair to her to be saddled for eternity with a partner who couldn’t appreciate all she had to offer. 

“No, no, this works. You two are so cute together. A beautiful, younger woman and--” Michael gestured vaguely at Bruce. “A little dork man.”

Bruce sighed. “But I’m  _ gay. _ ”

“Maybe you just think you’re gay because you call yourself gay.”

“No, I call myself gay because I  _ am. _ ”

“It’s impossible to prove correlation versus causation.”

Bruce wanted to scream, “It’s very possible! I’m a scientist! A gay scientist!” But he didn’t scream, because once he started screaming, he might not be able to stop. And once he started screaming at an older-white-male-authority-figure-shaped being, who knew what would happen? Was it possible to commit murder in Heaven? Would Bruce be the first person to get kicked out? Those were two investigative queries he didn’t want to be the lab rat for. 

Still, he didn’t know how much longer he could last. Or how long he’d already lasted. It was commonly said that time flew when you were having fun and crawled when you weren’t, might seem to last an eternity. But this actually  _ was _ eternity and Bruce’s patience was already wearing thin. 

On Earth, he kept his anger in check for the most part, minute by minute at a time, breathing exercise after breathing exercise, rubbing the knuckles of his fist into his open palm. Eventually, the minutes added up to years and he'd conjured a rough approximation of an even temper. Most would even call him _peaceable._ On Earth, it was easy to grasp the hours and the days, knowing they'd eventually end. Here, there was no finish line. He'd simply have to keep going. Indefinitely. And he wasn't sure he could.

* * *

  
Imperfection with no means of improvement was not Tony’s idea of paradise. He’d rather toil to renovate Hell. At least he’d have something to do.

He got the impression that Pepper felt the same way, but when he called her in for a kaffeeklatsch about overthrowing Heaven, she sat silent in a chair, nonplussed by Tony’s whiteboard. She exuded slouchiness, though she dared not actually slouch and ruin her good posture.

He’d written “INCOMPETENT GOOD PLACE” and “ACTUAL BAD PLACE” in two columns down the center. Scrawled in the corner, he’d written “ACTUAL GOOD PLACE,” but the only evidence that this place was, in fact, what it purported to be was Natasha and Pepper (and also Pepper comma sex with). Bruce Banner might have made an appearance in that column if he weren’t so prickly. OK, sure, in life, Tony had been what the kids would call “problematic.” But he’d seen the errors of his ways and had been working to atone before he died. Didn’t that count for something? 

Under “INCOMPETENT GOOD PLACE,” he’d listed “Nice flowers with bad smell,” “Ugly flowers with good smell,” “Too many pigeons,” “Michael seems like an idiot,” and “Avocaderias.” This alleged Good Place was littered with specialty avocado restaurants. They served avocado toast, of course, and sandwiches and salads, but also avocado grain bowls and avocado brownies, avocado pesto and avocado pudding, avocado fries and avocado ice cream, and absolutely no guac. These avocado holy sites were booming in Brooklyn when Tony died, which begged the question, if this  _ were  _ the actual Good Place, would it really borrow from  _ Brooklyn?  _

The whiteboard itself was evidence under “ACTUAL BAD PLACE.” If Tony Stark had a choice, he’d have, at minimum, a first-gen StarkTech laptop and a projector. But when he asked for presentation tools, Michael told him that technology was disruptive and overstimulating. Whiteboards were nice, Michael said; there was something satisfying about the squeak of Magic Marker, not to mention the aesthetic pleasure of erasing the whiteboard and missing a stray mark of ink. 

He’d written “Michael seems like a dick.” He thought about adding “Bruce is mean,” but he didn’t want to sound petulant in front of Pepper, and it’s not like Bruce didn’t have a point. 

The major revelation of the whiteboard was that discerning the difference between “INCOMPETENT GOOD PLACE” and “ACTUAL BAD PLACE” was nearly impossible. Where to put “living in childhood home,” for instance? Was that malice or well-intentioned ignorance? And did it matter? Did it ever matter if something was due to _incompetence_ or _evil_ when the end result was the same?

“Tony,” Pepper sighed, removing a bored hand from the side of her face and clasping it in her lap, “let’s assume that this is actually the Bad Place, or a bad Good Place.”

“Yes!” Tony exclaimed. That  _ had  _ been the point he was trying to make, and he was glad Pepper was finally coming around.

“Well, what can we do about it? Lay siege to Heaven? Storm Hell? How do you know they’re not listening in right now, ready to thwart any plan we come up with and send you--and me--to an even worse place?”

Tony hadn’t really thought of that. Yes, of course he knew it was a  _ possibility.  _ He was a Stark of Stark Industries; he knew the value of a good wiretap. But, he reasoned, he’d already committed the thoughtcrime. If whatever Powers That Be were going to do something, they would have done it already. Might as well keep going as far as he could.

Plus, Bruce had been vocal about his suspicions early on, sounding downright Alex Jones (although he’d resent the comparison), and he hadn’t been disposed of. 

“The point is,” Tony said, “the point is at least we’d know something and could try to do something even if…”

“Even if we can’t actually do anything and it would have disastrous consequences?”

Pepper was right, of course, in a pragmatic way that Tony abhorred. And he knew that standing in front of a scribbled-up whiteboard and ranting about avocaderias made him look like a lunatic. (If he didn't know, then the pitying look on Pepper's face told him so.) 

"Tony," Pepper said, standing up, "this place is...fine."  


"It shouldn't be _fine_! It should be _good_! But it isn't! So why?" 

Pepper gave him a sympathetic look and shrugged. "I don't think we're meant to know the answer." 

"Aaaaggghhh," Tony groaned. That just made him want to know the answer _more._

"I'm gonna go for a run, want to come with?" Pepper asked. But of course he didn't, and (they'd discussed this before) it was absolutely insane that she would choose to go running when there was absolutely no practical need whatsoever: health didn't matter when you were dead and, she'd have her top-of-the-line physical form forever.  But apparently she liked to run, in the same way Tony liked drinking, and she took off, leaving Tony with his manic whiteboard. If Pepper wasn’t on board, any plan was a non-starter. Tony felt he could do it--just not alone. He’d need at least one other person on his team. And if he could convince a certain someone, then he would have done the impossible, and a Heavenly coup would be easy.

  
  


* * *

The garden was Bruce’s stress relief, because of course he got stressed even in Heaven. But it was a garden the way Earth was a garden--that is to say, it was very large--and it was Bruce’s the way a family pet was considered the belonging of a child--that is to say, in name only, in a cutesy conciliatory gesture.

If Bruce neglected to water or weed the garden, it would not die. Technically, all the plants had already died. It was a garden of extinct flora and, though it was impressive at first, it had the same holographic emptiness that everything else had: the feeling that something should have been good and real, but wasn’t.

But it was mildly destressing, and Bruce turned to it whenever he thought what his real Heaven would be. His mom would be there, and it was awfully suspect that she wasn’t. And Tony Stark wouldn’t, although Pepper and Nat would be. Nat’s soulmate would not be a gay man, Pepper’s soulmate would deserve her, and Bruce...Bruce would be alone, which was better than this. And as long as he had books, like that guy in the Twilight Zone episode, he wouldn’t mind.

Or maybe, Bruce thought has he tended to his garden, maybe he didn’t  _ need  _ to be alone for eternity. Maybe he would have wound up with a charming, handsome man who was every bit his intellectual equal, who balanced Bruce in ways that he needed. Bold when Bruce was timid. Confident when Bruce was insecure. Someone who had an easy way with people when Bruce was prickly, who shared Bruce’s wry humor...who wasn’t responsible for environmental destruction and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Fucking Tony! Bruce yanked a rare, precious weed out of the ground with a little too much fervor, sending dirt flying into his hair. He was ruffling it out when, “speak of the devil himself, Tony approached.

“Hey! Janet told me you’d be here.”

Bruce smiled coldly. “How helpful of her.”

“Listen, I--” Tony looked around as if suddenly aware of--and seemingly impressed by--the surrounding foliage, probably fantasizing about its destruction. “Did they give this to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Bruce shrugged. “I guess they thought it would make me happy.”

“And does it?”

Bruce bit back his honest answer: He didn’t think anything would make him happy. Instead of being pitiful, though, he decided to be aggressive.

“Not particularly. I’d be happy if they were back on earth where they belong, before capitalist hubris and greed--”

“Cool it, Banner. That big guy over there hasn’t been around since the third century, and this happy little cluster went out three hundred years before the first Industrial Revolution. You can’t blame capitalism, or me, for everything.”

Bruce folded his arms. Fucking Tony, being reasonable. And surprisingly knowledgeable about extinct plants. Or maybe not so surprising. He was, after all, a genius, just like Bruce. 

“That’s not what I wanted to talk about, though. Although if you ever want to tell me about your plant friends...I get the feeling you’re not down for an avocado latte. Anyway, you know how you keep saying I don’t belong here?” 

“Yes.”

“And you know how you’re like, ‘If Tony Stark is here, then where’s Genghis Khan and Palaptine, because adjusted for inflation, they haven’t done half the destruction that Tony Stark has?”

“....yes.” He’d said all of that in Tony’s earshot, but it somehow sounded meaner when repeated back.

“And how you said ‘If this is The Good Place, then send me to the Bad one, because that’s probably where gay socialist Jesus--’”

“Yes, yes, OK, yes,” Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that I agree.”

“What?”

“I agree with you.”

Bruce groaned. Of  _ course  _ that’s why he felt bad; Tony was manipulating him. “So this is some poor-little-rich-kid sob story?”

“It’s not. Promise. There are other things, too. Like I’m living in my childhood home. Short of my dad actually being there and me reverting back to the age of 15, that’s my idea of Hell.”

Tony’s childhood home was a mansion that had been frequently written up in both interior design and technology magazines. Maybe it wasn’t as luxurious as the skyscraper he built for himself 20 years later, but it was hardly in the neighborhood of Hell.

“The ‘bad father’ card won’t work on me.” 

“I already told you it’s not some gambit for sympathy. I agree with you--I think this is the Bad Place.”

This didn’t seem like Heaven, but it didn’t seem like Hell, either. And now that Tony agreed with him, Bruce suddenly reconsidered his thesis. “I wouldn’t go that far. It’s bad, but it’s not Bad. I know it’s not the luxury you’re used to, but it’s a far cry from drawing and quartering.”

“You’re suddenly changing your tune? Snipe at my privilege all you want, the fact remains: this is not the Good Place. Whether it’s the Bad Place or the Medium Place or the Three-Quarters Place, who knows?”

“OK, so what? You think we can figure out the secret and, what, overthrow Heaven or Hell or whoever’s in charge?”

“Maybe.” Tony shrugged. “Maybe not. But at least we’ll have figured something out. I’m putting a team together. You, me, Pepper, and hopefully Nat. I don’t know, I haven’t spoken to her yet. Maybe you can convince her.” Tony winked at Bruce like they were two lotharios sharing a knowing, sexy secret and Bruce’s stomach squirmed. It was equally likely that Tony was making fun of him. 

Bruce crossed his arms over his chest to symbolically contain his words inside of him. He shouldn’t say the next thing, he shouldn’t...”It just didn’t make sense that…”

“That what?” Tony asked.

“I’m no saint, but--” Bruce squeezed his eyes shut. “--it doesn’t make sense that we’re in the same place. Good, Bad, or Medium. I’m not...as bad as you.”

“Yeah, because you never had the chance. You limited yourself to writing grant proposals for forest preservation and library funding. But maybe The Powers That Be know that deep down, you--”

Bruce’s mind exploded in green fury. Before he knew it, he took off running before he could prove Tony right.

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
